Rinse and repeat: Inside the ecosystem of Dhaka's laundry business

Have you ever wondered where your shirt goes after you drop it off at the neighbourhood laundry shop? Not the poetic kind of wondering, but the actual, logistical kind? 

You hand over a bag of clothes to the laundryman, he gives you a small token, and that is it. Days later, the same clothes return, clean, pressed and strangely lighter, as if the dust and exhaustion of the week have been rinsed out of them.

It turns out, between that handover and return, there is a whole ecosystem, a silent web of people, machines and routines that most of us hardly notice despite the fact that it passes through almost every alley and riverside of Dhaka.

There is always one or two nearby laundry shops with a sun-faded signboard and a man sitting behind a counter, stacked with plastic-wrapped shirts in the background. That small counter is really just the front end of a much more extensive system. It simply serves as the middleman, collecting, sorting, tagging, and passing the clothes on to a washing house somewhere across the city. 

"The clothes don't get washed here since we don't have a washing factory of our own, we contract with different washing factories across the city based on their availability," said Nazrul Islam, who owns Top Clean Laundry and has been in the business for more than 12 years. "My main customers are nearby families and some hotels in this area. After Covid-19, things shifted a bit. Some people got used to online services, but our regular customers still prefer walking in."

Although their clientele is primarily local households, these local stores frequently serve a wider area. Some handle laundry for hotels, hospitals or event management companies. While larger hotels and hospitals have their own laundry facilities, smaller establishments rely on these local networks to maintain clean uniforms and white sheets. 

The new online laundries are like digital extensions of the old 'paara' system that run on home pickups. You do not have to carry a heavy bag to the corner shop anymore. You can simply schedule a wash on a website or social media page, and someone will arrive at your door to receive the order. 

Normal wash, dry wash, even steam press, everything is available. But the process behind both versions — old and new — still relies on the same invisible chain. Be it the neighbourhood laundry shop or the online one, after collecting the clothes, they sort them and then send them to washing houses scattered across the city. 

The washing houses, where the real labour of the city's laundry trade happens, still tend to grow near water, just like the old 'dhopas' who once chose riverbanks and canals. In Dhaka, many of these washing factories cluster around water-adjacent areas like Badda, Aftab Nagar and parts of Uttara. A few still operate by the Buriganga's dark edge, where generations before had beaten shirts against stones.

Setting up such a business, compared to many others, requires less capital. A rented space, a couple of assistants, a sturdy iron machine, and a connection to a washing factory are often enough to begin with. 

One laundry owner who recently moved his business to Eskaton described it as a "managerial kind of hectic". 

The business, he said, has its own rhythm of deadlines and deliveries that demands more coordination than physical labour. It may not bring large profits overnight, but for many, it offers stability.  

Neighbourhood laundries serve as gateways to a citywide washing network. Photo: Rajib Dhar

The art of keeping track

Laundry work in Dhaka is, in a way, an exercise of memory as well. One of the biggest questions is how they keep track of so many clothes — piles upon piles of shirts, sharis, bed linens; all belonging to different people. 

"Usually our clothes don't get swapped," said shopkeeper Manju from Bandbox, one of Dhaka's oldest laundry lines. "We manually keep track. Each order has a unique tag code. We also give a matching token to the customer. So when they come back, they show the token, and we match the order." 

Each clothing item gets two tags; once before being packed into separate bags, and then the bag itself. Those bags travel to the washing house, where they are washed, dried and sent back with the same tags. The shopkeepers then recheck the orders before handing them to customers.

Manju recalled one mix-up that he still laughs about. "Once I delivered the wrong shirt to a senior government officer. There were three white cotton shirts, the same fabric and almost the same in size. After the complaint, I took all three shirts to him and let him pick which one was his. He did. We apologised and gave him a discount. These things happen rarely, but when they do, we try to fix them quickly."

When a garment does get lost, especially at the washing house, compensation follows. "We try to make it up however the customer prefers," he said. "But more than money, we understand the sentiment. Each piece of clothing can hold memory, so we try our best to handle it carefully." 

Customers may forgive a late delivery, but a lost shari from a wedding or a favourite shirt carries a kind of heartbreak that no detergent or discount can wash away. 

Evolution throughout the years

Before all this mechanical way of washing and drying, laundry in Dhaka was a different scene altogether. The old dhopas who spent their days scrubbing by the rivers gradually moved indoors and learned how to operate, maintain or watch over the new industrial washers that now handle their tasks.

These machines are quite different from the ones found in homes; they are massive, custom-built for relentless loads. Each machine can handle over a hundred garments at once; even 20 blankets can tumble together without protest. 

After washing, a device called the 'hydro' spins out most of the water, and the dryers take it from there. Those machines are like 'modern-day dhopas'; efficient, tireless, immune to sunburn and fatigue.

Yet even the best machines fall short where judgment is needed. 

Stubborn stains, bleeding colours, or fragile fabrics still call for the human touch. Workers still sort clothes by hand in terms of the amount of dirt, texture, and type of stain, because a button cannot tell the difference between an old silk shari and a hospital sheet.

The few who still wash by hand

By the banks of the Buriganga, a few dhopas still hold on to the old ways. You can find them early in the morning, bent over the water, their movements steady and rhythmic. They do not earn much now, and work has thinned out since most households have moved to shops and online services.

Near Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH), there is a group of dhopas who have been washing the hospital's linen for decades. Hospital laundry requires special treatment; disinfecting, boiling, and multiple rinses to remove germs and stains. The men work without gloves, their skin hardened from years of detergent and bleach. 

For them, it is not about holding on to tradition, rather something their fathers did, and now they do.

The laundry system of Dhaka is not just one thing, it is many things running at once. It is the corner shop with a tired fan, the washing house by the canal, the online shop promising 24-hour delivery, and the man working in the laundry house of DMCH still trusts his hands more than any machine.

It is an invisible thread that ties together people who you will never meet, the shopkeeper who tags your shirt, the factory worker who loads it into the machine, the driver who delivers it back to your street.

And maybe that is the quiet charm of it. The laundry system does not chase attention. It just runs, like background music in the rhythm of the city. 

So, the next time you hand over your clothes and receive that small paper token, try to think of it not as a receipt but as a promise. Somewhere between your alley and a riverside factory, someone will take your shirt, wash off its fatigue, and your clothes will find their way back to you, clean and complete.